My summons was far more pitiful than commanding, but I couldn't have cared less, considering my fingers were becoming weaker and slipping marginally by the second. Fortunately enough, it only took a few moments for a head of mussed white hair to appear above me, wide gold eyes staring down at me in a panicked state.
"Oi pask (1), Violet!" Slim but strong hands grasped at my arms and tugged me back into the Horizon. I could only laugh breathlessly at Erich's perturbed expression as adrenaline pumped through me.
"How did you get out there?" Sobering a little, but not much, I let out a quiet sigh.
"I tried to catch a shadow." The reproachful look he cast me was to be expected. I grinned impishly, not about to apologize but wanting to take my assistant's thoughts into account.
"Having a school-girl crush does not entitle you to go jumping out of windows after him, you know." This again. For whatever reason, my strong resolve to work on Pitch's new sense of purpose somehow translated to a crush, as far as Erich was concerned. I stood myself up and crossed my arms to glare at him.
"We've been over this a hundred times, Erich. I do not have a crush on the Boogeyman." For as sensible as the strange man was, sometimes he made absolutely no sense, which served to both amuse and disgruntle me.
"Whatever you say, minu daam." I huffed and turned to move towards the tea tray across the room, not sure that I needed caffeine just then but intent on treating myself to some, anyway.
"Flattery won't always get you out of trouble, you know. Chai?" I poured Earl Gray for myself and stirred in the honey as I half-heartedly chastised him.
While Erich's scholarly training was impeccable, being isolated for so long had caused him to forget and misinterpret certain social cues, which I was wholly responsible for amending.
I still found myself smiling every time I remembered the instance in which he had challenged Frost to a duel after said winter spirit had covered part of the Horizon in ice as a prank. This had posed a threat to the bindings of some of the books as well as having frozen my boots to the floor. I'd had to break the two apart (after Erich had succeeded in toppling my least favorite guardian) and received nothing less than a mild case of frostbite on my hands as a thank you. Jack had been banned for a full year, after that, and I'd had to sit Erich down for a very lengthy discussion on how to more subtly react to negative behaviors within our domain.
"Yes, please. But it does seem to work with you…most of the time." I rolled my eyes and poured the spiced mixture into a teacup. The absurdity I'd had to deal with in the hour I'd been awake was too much and my assistant's lack of understanding topped it off.
"I'm not everyone, Erich. I oversee you and have no qualms about giving you instruction; others don't think that way. Immortals especially, I've come to understand, are impatient with interpersonal conflict…we have time, so don't stress." According to the fair-haired man, he was physically 25 years old, although he seemed to have been biologically frozen for a far longer time than I had.
Erich nodded in understanding and accepted the cup I handed to him, head tilted slightly as he watched me curiously.
"Time until your formal induction ceremony, you mean?" I stared at him blankly, processing the words, before nearly dropping my own cup.
"M-my what?" I sputtered, suddenly having no desire to drink the beverage sloshing around in my trembling cup. Erich, the dear that he was, didn't quite pick up on my state of mind just then.
"Your induction; every Bookkeeper has one, after five years of proving that they can carry out the tasks assigned to them. I believe that yours is in…three days from now?" I set my cup down and rounded on him, eyes wide as my mind swam in equal parts panic and exasperation.
"Was I supposed to know about this? Or prepare, for that matter?" Slowly, realization dawned on his face, a sort of panic matching my own coming with it. He fidgeted with his drink before finally meeting my gaze.
"There's an event committee that takes care of the preparations, but you're sort of supposed to…write your own pledge." I suddenly felt faint. With a hysterical giggle, I moved back to the futon to collapse onto it, trying to reel in my somewhat irrational anger towards my assistant.
"You're going to help me," I groused, voice muffled by the linens. The sound of a few cautious footsteps being taken accompanied the nervous bout of fidgeting I'm sure Erich had fallen into.
"I'm not so sure-"
"I have three days to prepare a speech that I should have had five years for. If I need to use you as a sounding board, at the very least, you had better sit pretty and let me do it." I sat myself up to take in the furrow-browed look of confusion on his flushed face.
"'Pretty?' I can assure you that I am a gentleman of honorable-" A laugh escaped me, cutting off the ensuing tirade I knew he was about to fly into.
"Mr. Sitri, we have got to go over figure of speech again. And gender neutrality, while we're at it." I picked my cup back up and headed towards the desk laden with papers of varying lengths and topics scribbled down on them. This was the place that I messily jotted down and toyed with ideas, before making them reality, and the complete disarray it was in made that fact obvious.
A stool slid across the room to land just underneath me as I sat down, my eyes already scanning my notes for anything salvageable enough to use in my pledge. The pages were lining themselves up, fairly settled now and eager to make themselves of use, but I found myself frowning as I shifted my gaze from paper to paper.
I had nothing.
"What have I been doing the past five years? The bare minimum, really. I mean, I still can't fully control the books or scrolls. What am I supposed to write?"
"Violet?"
"Can I really not come up with a single thing? This is so annoying."
"Violet."
"I mean, really, I should be able to come up with some-"
"Violet!"
"Hm?" I shook myself out of my daze and looked up in surprise as six amused faces looked over to me. An embarrassed laugh escaped me as I stood and barreled towards the cluster of visitors, not pausing to leap up and hug the large man in red around the neck.
"North! Everyone, welcome back! Thank you for coming on such short notice." I dropped back down from being nearly crushed and lunged at Toothiana and Bunny at the same time, squeezing briefly, before moving back into my space bubble. I cast Jack a withering smile and moved back towards my desk. This wasn't going to be pretty.
"Please, take a seat." Stools of varying sizes and sturdiness slid out from the shadowy parts of the room and skidded to a stop just behind each one of my guests. Erich had already taken up his post beside the desk and was peering over to Jack with mild distaste.
"I won't waste anyone's time; Christmas is only three months away and I know that all of you have your daily tasks to upkeep." Panic began to well up in my chest, reminding me to open the radio frequency that was shared with Pitch's memo book. I sighed quietly at the thought of the ensuing storm of questions and yelling.
"A very alarming development has recently been brought to my attention-augh, I'm talking like that again. Guys, something really big and bad is coming to the surface, soon. I don't know if there's some sort of alarm or signal or-"
"Violet, we know; Manny just told us." I paused and looked over to where Toothiana was hovering just over the stool I provided. Confusion hit me like a bullet train.
"You all know," I repeated dumbly, but quickly recovered.
"Isn't this a huge issue? Shouldn't plans be made to counter any attack that might-that will happen? The books and the scrolls-"
"Wait, who told you about it?" Of course, Jack was the first one to jump up to question me. I frowned and fidgeted with the chain of my compass.
"The missing member of my triumvirate."
"I thought you weren't on speaking terms with Pitch, sheila." The tension was already building in the room.
"Not since about an hour ago. Erich can tell you as much. Even if it's for his own reasons, he's also concerned about this, but what matters right now is that everyone is on the same page." The temperature in the room dropped several degrees and I could see Erich rise to his feet from my peripherals as Jack's expression turned sour.
"Why would he make it a point to show up after years, just to tell you about something you would've found out about, anyway?" A groan rumbled in my throat as I braced myself for another round of verbal clashing.
"I don't know; ask him. My only concerns are to keep the Horizon secure and the children safe." My fuse was already inches from blowing and we hadn't even been in the same room for ten minutes.
"Yeah right. You and your creepy henchman probably fell for one of his tricks."
"Jack!" Toothiana was much more fazed than I was by his rude words. I snatched Erich's shirtsleeve in an insistent grip as he lunged forward.
"Erich's my assistant and his appearance and mannerisms aren't any more bizarre than yours. No deals were made and no information that any of you don't know was given, okay?" I looked down at Sandy, who had seemed rather contemplative throughout the argument.
"We're supposed to try to work together as a trio. I really want to give Pitch the benefit of the doubt, in this case. What would he get by telling me the exact same information that MiM told you?"
"Your trust, for one." I really wanted to lose my composure; I really did, but I knew that I wouldn't be taken seriously by any of them, if I fell for Jack's bait.
"That's the point," I sighed. Erich had slowly sat himself back down, looking to me for cues, which gave me all the more reason to remain calm.
"It has to be mutual and I need to give in order to get. He's been on the defensive for a good part of history and I think it'd be fair to extend the same treatment to him that we give each other." The bracelet around my wrist suddenly burned and I winced.
Not now, I hissed silently while continuing to appear calm externally. What did he disapprove of now?
"I understand your thinking." I turned to look at North, who had been so uncharacteristically quiet that I'd nearly forgotten that he was there.
"But I will say that most of us here would advise you to be very careful in your decision making." It was just what I had been expecting of North; an honest opinion, but one of caution. It was better than a negative reaction.
"And you are right; we must form a plan. A plan that will work for all members on our side. Gather around, everyone!"
~.~
As every meeting within the past five years had been, this one consisted of a lot of disagreements, coupled with a whole lot of backtracking. After about three hour's worth of varying levels of diplomacy, as well as a few common objects being thrown across the room, I was able to get the basic guidelines of our plan written down.
"So, it's agreed that each one of us has certain perimeters and individuals to cover? And the areas in question for each of us has already been hammered out, so…now, we have to find a sensible method of at least stalling this thing, right? I know you told me that MiM has a way of containing it, but I still want back-up plans and evacuation routes."
I looked up from dipping my quill into the inkwell to find five distracted looking immortals scattered around the room. I frowned as I realized how much of their time I had taken up.
"Which we can totally do another day. This is important but I know that all of us have other pressing matters to see to." The sensation of relief that flowed throughout the room both amused and chagrinned me; I felt like a teacher who had just let her class out a few minutes earlier than usual.
Jack, of course, was the first one to leap up from his spot on the futon and head for the nearest window.
"Finally. Later, Bookworm!" He was gone, before I could throw my own parting remark at him, so I had to resort to huffing irritably and turning my attention back to my lingering guests.
"Tomorrow-no, wait, the day after? Same place, same time?" Sandy and Toothiana were quick to agree but Bunny seemed to have caught my alteration rather quickly.
"Why not tomorrow?" I stopped suddenly; I hadn't mentioned the preparations I needed to make for the ceremony.
"I need to write a speech for my inauguration." I couldn't help the sigh that slipped through my lips.
"Ask Erich about it, if you have any questions." It was harsh for me to out him, but I needed him to learn from his mistakes. I had moved back over towards my desk and was already up to my elbows in rouge pages that hadn't been filled out, yet.
I sent them into a more organized cluster with a wave of my hand, glared as some of them refused to listen, then smiled as they grudgingly filed in with the others. I cooed at them encouragingly before remembering that I still had company.
With a start, I spun on my heel to address Bunny and North, but found only Erich standing at attention with a smile on his face.
"Did I zone out again?" Erich nodded and I groaned, noticing his smile widen slightly at my frustration.
"I let them know that you will contact them, the day after next." I sighed in relief and smiled up at him. The look of unease he usually wore in large groups had faded to the genuine smile I knew him by.
"Thank you, Erich. You're a life saver." He seemed confused, for a moment, but I waited and found myself smiling as something dawned on him.
"Ah, right, euphemisms. You are very welcome, Violet. I am going to prepare lunch now, if you will excuse me." With a nod of acknowledgment, I let my eyes wander back to the desk, my hand coming up to rest around the tether keeping my compass around my neck.
"I hope that you were listening." A jolt shot up my arm, the bracelet the source of the pain, and I had my answer. With a nod, I tapped the face of the contraption to cut communication off.
"Okay, good," I muttered. My eyes were wandering back to the table again and I wondered when I had become such a workaholic.
Probably when the work started to involve people's lives. The answer came almost immediately and seemed logical enough for me to leave the thought be. I had work to do.
1 Oh "crap"